Later this month, Ukip will descend on the northern Labour-held town of
Doncaster to hold its annual conference. The party has good cause to celebrate.
Since its last conference in 2013, at which Nigel Farage was overshadowed by Godfrey Bloom,
Ukip has made a serious advance in British politics. The party won the European parliament elections, has since revamped its front team and now, after the defection of Douglas Carswell in Clacton, looks set to win
its first seat in parliament. But how has support for Ukip been evolving during
all this?
To answer this question we can draw on the prestigious British
Election Study, which has just released
the results of its latest survey, undertaken after the European elections. This
means we can compare the findings to surveys earlier in the year to explore how
support for Ukip has changed, if at all. There are three important
messages.
The first is that over the period of the European parliament elections,
Ukip’s appeal widened along the political spectrum (as some of us have been
arguing). Former Conservative voters continue to provide the bulk of support to
Farage; of those who voted Conservative in 2010, 20% say that they are planning
to vote Ukip in 2015 (up from 17% in February).
But since the beginning of the year, Ukip has also been winning more
support from disaffected Liberal Democrats and Labour voters. By June, almost a
quarter (22%) of Ukip’s support came from voters who previously chose one of
these two parties. Of the two, the shift from Labour supporters to Ukip has been the most significant,
increasing from 5% to 11% at the time of the European
elections.
Meanwhile, support among Lib Dem voters for Ukip has increased from 11%
to 13%, providing further evidence that Ukip is possibly beginning to attract
the protest element of the Lib Dem base. Clearly, many of these voters might
only have switched to Ukip for the European elections. The challenge facing
Farage is to convert them into long-term supporters, while the task facing the
main parties is to win them back.
The second message is that the anti-Ukip campaign appears to have had no significant effect on
how the British public feels about Ukip or Farage. Before the European
elections, 25% of respondents said they “liked” Ukip and 23% liked Farage. When
these voters were surveyed again after the European elections, 28% liked Ukip
(+3%) and 27% liked Farage (+4%). Despite repeated attempts to portray the party
in a negative light, Ukip and its leader actually became more likable in the
eyes of the public. In fact, Farage managed to outperform both David Cameron
(whose likability increased by 0.2%) and Ed Miliband (whose likability declined
by 2% during the same period).
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